Robot rock 🤖
Can AI help your podcast?
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The way I feel about the inevitable robot uprising is both terrified and soothed all in one very confusing mix. On the one hand, I feel an indignant frustration when my smart speaker responds only to my husband’s voice and not mine. On the other, I can’t deny that Spotify (🙃)’s ability to inform me what my music taste is better than my own brain is sort of thrilling. Or at the very least, extremely useful.
Can AI help us out when it comes to podcasting though? This week I decided to take a look at a few AI-powered apps.
And I should say – this comes with the massive caveat that I don’t look forward to a future where we’re replacing illustrators and composers and journalists with robots. Pay lovely creative flawed human beings to make stuff for your show! But hopefully this gives a general sense of what’s out there and the direction we might be going in.
1) Music
Mubert calls itself a “unique collaborative platform that pairs musicians with AI”. You can generate a track from scratch based on the time length you’d like, and/or generate songs that are similar to the platform’s royalty-free license tracks. Relevant themes include ‘documentary’ and ‘music for podcasts’.
You’ll still have to wade your way through hours of EDM and tropical house, but the tunes are not a million miles away from what you’d find on libraries like Epidemic, with the obvious upshot that you’ll have a custom-made track when you’re done.
2) Cover art
WOMBO Dream is an app that lets you type in any word or phrase as a prompt, choose an art style, and then gives you an AI-powered artwork. Obviously it’s not intended for podcast cover art, but it struck me that you could use it to generate schemes or colour palettes for your cover or episode art. The themes could be a good starting point if you’re then working with an illustrator/designer. Alternatively this app could be handy simply for brainstorming the sonic palette of your show – throw in some key words from your show and see if it sparks any ideas for sound design.
(WOMBO also has an ethically questionable lip syncing app which I tested out for research purposes and will now have that Glass Animals song stuck in my head f o r e v e r. )
3) Transcription and editing
Probably most of you are familiar with Descript now. Day to day, I tend to use Otter for transcription, which is mostly great. But at the minute I’m usually transcribing the voices of non-American speakers, which the robots have trouble with – particularly Northern Irish voices, which I’m trying not to take personally. Others include Podcastle, Fireflies.ai and Auphonic.
Jobs
🌹Producer ~ Here & Now, WBUR ~ Culver City, CA
🌹Announcer / Host Fellow ~ King FM ~ Seattle, WA
🌹Podcast Producer ~ Bar\Heart ~ Remote, US
🌹Story Editor/Executive Producer ~ Vespucci ~ Remote, UK
🌹Tech & Engineering Intern (Spring 2022) ~ Gilded Audio ~ Remote, must be based in Illinois
Fellowships, festivals and more
💟 Above the Fray fellowship for early career journalists ~ deadline 15 February
💟 48th International Feature Conference – IFC AudioDocs 2022 ~ 22-26 May ~ submit your pieces before 18 February
💟 Audio Under the Stars festival ~ call for submissions, deadline 21 February
💟 Dart Center's Global Early Childhood Reporting Fellowship ~ deadline 28 February
💟 All you need to know about Copyright, Trade Marks and IP with Digital Media Lawyer Cliff Fluet ~ Audio Train ~ 22 February
What I’m watching
Seeing as everything we engage with eventually makes its way (hopefully!) into the audio we make, this week I’m sharing what I’m reading and watching, rather than listening to.
📺 Joe Pera Talks With You is back for season three: such a gentle, slow-paced comedy about paying attention to the little things. It’s a balm. Though hard to say if anything will beat that epic episode about The Who.
📖 I recently finished Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost In The Throat, a stunning meditation on motherhood, obsession and poetry. It’s a blend of memoir, poetry and history: truly have never read anything else like it. Doireann is interviewed about the novel on this ep of The Irish Times’ Women’s Podcast.
🎶 And a curveball: Hans Zimmer’s masterclass! I don’t see myself scoring films anytime soon but I’ve learned a ton about experimenting and creativity – plus his enthusiasm for what he does is infectious.
Thanks for reading folks. If you enjoyed the newsletter, share with a friend or colleague — it’s how I get the word out 💌